How to keep your sanity when the clocks go back

On the 28th of October, the clocks go back one hour. You wouldn’t have thought it would have that much power over us, but surprisingly enough, shorter days take a period of mental adjustment. Of course, there are highlights to the season – our wonderful Autumn luxury candle being one of them – but it can still be easy to get thrown off your stride by always coming and going in darkness. Luckily, we’re here with some handy tips on how to get through it!

Make sure to get your fix of Vitamin D

There’s a reason so many of us always feel so bright and energised in the summer mornings. Humans have evolved to be daylight creatures, so sunlight makes us energised on both a physical and mental level. It makes sense, then, that when we’re suddenly getting less of it, it can leave us feeling drained and drowsy. On top of that, it’s probably fair to say that we’re often particularly sun-starved here in the UK, so it means we just have to be a little bit more determined in our sunshine fix!

Even if you’re cooped up in the office for most of the week, don’t assume you can’t have your ‘moment in the sun!’ If the skies are clear and the weather’s bright, you can always sneakily volunteer for a quick coffee run, or to pick up something from the shops during lunch. And if you don’t need a pretext, just shrug your coat on to enjoy a quick ten to fifteen minute walk on your break. Trust us, it can do absolute wonders to lift your mood, and can help liberate you from that cooped-up feeling that winter can sometimes inflict! In fact, that leads us nicely onto our next point…

Get some exercise

OK, so this isn’t exactly a groundbreaking tip, but there’s a lot of good reasons that you hear it so often! It’s been a well-known fact for decades that exercise can decrease depression (as can a lovely relaxing spa bath with one of our Lavender scented candles – but obviously for different reasons!). After all, exercise not only does good things for your physical health, but it also releases feel-good chemicals in the brain, staving off the symptoms of stress, depression and anxiety.

If rigorous jogs up the riverside aren’t normally your thing, we understand. The lure of a comfy sofa is a powerful one to resist. But you can take a lot of the challenge out of exercise by reframing the way you think of it. Exercise is often far easier when done in the company of others – and better yet, when it doesn’t feel like exercise at all! Joining something like a salsa class is always fun, and you can end up having completed hours of aerobic exercise by the time you go home, allowing you to enjoy a snuggle on the sofa and one of our Angel scented candles completely guilt-free!

Make things easy for yourself

Once all summer holidays are over, and children are rapidly settling back into school, Autumn can be a busy time, all told! It can be easy to get overwhelmed by an ever-growing tasklist, with Halloween just around the corner, and Christmas just beginning to poke its festive head over the horizon. And with the clocks going back and the days getting shorter, it can easily create the illusion that you’ve got less time to deal with it all. That’s not true, of course – the days are just the length they always were, but it can still be a tricky thing to get your head around!

A good way to combat this is to take a long, hard look at your to-do list. Focus on the stuff that’s really important, like the car’s MOT, for example. Is there anything you can leave for a few weeks, like cleaning out downstairs cupboards? Next year? Even better, does it really need to be done at all? By eliminating unnecessary tasks (even temporarily), you can lift a lot of mental burdens off yourself and ease off plenty of stress as a result.

Keeping up a good rhythm with it all is always helpful, too. Tackle one to two important tasks each day. When you feel in a particularly productive mood, take advantage of it to wipe out as much of this tasklist as you can. (We always find that a burst of mental energy from luxury candles like Dance or Joy can always help!) Equally, if it gets all too much, you should never be afraid to take a break. In fact…

Get some rest!

Modern life has always been frantically busy, and today’s technology means we’re always connected, always ‘on-the-grid’. How many of us check our phones last thing before we go to bed, and how often are they the first thing we check in the mornings? It’s easy to forget how to switch off, even for brief periods of time. After all, when you think about it, Autumn and Winter are both seasons the planet around us uses to rest and recharge – so why shouldn’t we?

Don’t be afraid to say no to something, or take a selfish evening for yourself every once in a while. Family life often doesn’t leave much room for ‘me time’, so much like with your Vitamin D fix above, you might have to be a bit more proactive with how you get it.

Here at Melt, we’re quite the experts in Me Time, even if we do say so ourselves. Luxury scents like Blush are perfect for chilling out and relaxing of an evening, especially in the cooler nights of Autumn and Winter! Of course, you might have your own favourites from our range – why not take a trip down to our little shop on the farm, and see what you can find?